Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A heavily populated urban area characterized by substandard housing and squalor.
  • intransitive verb To visit impoverished areas or squalid locales, especially out of curiosity or for amusement.
  • idiom (slum it) To endure conditions or accommodations that are worse than what one is accustomed to.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In metallurgy, same as slime, 3: chiefly in the plural.
  • noun A dirty back street of a city, especially such a street inhabited by a squalid and criminal population; a low and dangerous neighborhood: chiefly in the plural: as, the slums of Whitechapel and Westminster in London.
  • To keep to back streets.
  • To visit the slums of a city, often from mere curiosity or as a diversion.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A foul back street of a city, especially one filled with a poor, dirty, degraded, and often vicious population; any low neighborhood or dark retreat; -- usually in the plural.
  • noun (Mining) Same as Slimes.
  • intransitive verb colloq. To visit or frequent slums, esp. out of curiosity, or for purposes of study, etc. Also called go slumming.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A dilapidated neighborhood where many people live in a state of poverty.
  • verb To visit a neighborhood of a status below one's own.
  • verb To associate with people or engage in activities with a status below one's own.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb spend time at a lower socio-economic level than one's own, motivated by curiosity or desire for adventure; usage considered condescending and insensitive
  • noun a district of a city marked by poverty and inferior living conditions

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

This definition is lacking an etymology or has an incomplete etymology. You can help Wiktionary by giving it a proper etymology.

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